HP Pavilion N5470 & Win2K Pro crashes on V1 & 2

RBEmerson · 05-09-2003, 09:05 AM

I'm trying to get either version (V1.0 bought at CompUSA and V2.0 d/l from Serene Screen) to run on this laptop and not having much luck. The symptoms are pretty simple: the screen image freezes, the sound loops at the last sound fragment heard, and CTL-ALT-DEL has no effect. I have to hold the power button down to shut down the laptop. On re-booting, the corrupt bit is set on the hard driver (40G) and Win2K does a scandisk before starting Win2K fully. Sometimes I have to restore the active desktop screen background (a JPEG image). The crash happens within a few seconds even with one fish (french angel) and no bubbles. Exit on mouse motion is off.

The video "card" is a Trident CyberBlade XP, I have the current drivers from HP, and DirectX 9.0a. The CPU is 1 GHz Athlon 4, there's 256M of RAM on top of a 40G HDD (currently ~25G free). I don't have AOL Instant Messanger, etc. running but I do have Norton, NoAds (pop-up blocker), CookiePal (cookie blocker), Ship's Bell (chimes on the hour and half hour with ding-ding, ding-ding, etc.) and GetTime (gets time of day from NTP server on my local net) running plus whatever stuff Microsoft adds for running Win2KPro (SP3 and critical patches). I did a search here for this laptop (HP Pavilion N5470) but didn't find anything.

All other blankers work without a hitch including Syntrillium's Snoqualmie blanker (lots of dots and colors moving around).

Help!

Cheers,
Rick

feldon34 · 05-09-2003, 09:53 AM

Can you close all those programs and then test the Aquarium again?

Also, I love how the "latest" driver for that Trident Cyberblade XP video chipset is dated 26-Jul-01.

You might need to download a driver like this one:
http://www2.driverguide.com/cgi/down...84/trident.zip

But please be aware that if this driver does not work, you may need to log into Safe mode to get back to the old driver.

As to "Why do I need to change my computer to run the Aquarium?"

Strangely, most computer manufacturers not to mention Microsoft include very watered-down and often buggy drivers as the "default" drivers. You don't notice problems because you are not doing anything demanding with the computer like Direct3D applications, games, etc.

I am not sure where this practice started, but it is a real problem and one that causes countless support headaches for SereneScreen and game publishers.

Jim Sachs · 05-09-2003, 10:39 AM

RBEmerson -

Do other 3D applications run? "Lots of dots and colors" doesn't mean 3D. The 3D drivers are totally different, and might be what are causing the crash.

RBEmerson · 05-09-2003, 10:54 AM

Originally posted by feldon27
Can you close all those programs and then test the Aquarium again?[/i]

Went there, did that (two french angels, no bubbles, no exit on mouse) at 1024x786x16 and... crashed as always.

Also, I love how the "latest" driver for that Trident Cyberblade XP video chipset is dated 26-Jul-01.

Uh, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Nah... I believe it, either.

You might need to download a driver like this one:
http://www2.driverguide.com/cgi/down...84/trident.zip

But please be aware that if this driver does not work, you may need to log into Safe mode to get back to the old driver.

Just so. This driver did terrible things to my system when I tried it a month or so back.

As to "Why do I need to change my computer to run the Aquarium?"

Strangely, most computer manufacturers not to mention Microsoft include very watered-down and often buggy drivers as the "default" drivers. You don't notice problems because you are not doing anything demanding with the computer like Direct3D applications, games, etc.

I am not sure where this practice started, but it is a real problem and one that causes countless support headaches for SereneScreen and game publishers.

Er, I don't think I asked the question but, um, since you raise it, having to re-tune the system drastically (e.g., GetTime services three other Windows PC's with ToD so killing that affects four PC's - not an option) to support a screen saver is Not Good.

I will say that this particular laptop does a host of fairly demanding things including real time astro imaging (amazing what a web cam can be talked into doing!) and real-time boat navigation (either raster scan or vector generated charts moved as the boat moves as well as handling GPS input and running an autopilot that steers the boat) without collapsing. The longest non-stop run to date is Cape May, NJ to Block Island, NY on a sail boat; that was 35 hours of non-stop nav program operation (i.e., chart updates, steering data collection and distribution) without a problem.

One other data point FWIW. The Aqua Real app works well in full screen and backdrop modes with only two problems. A) There are some dropouts in all moving objects (maybe 5-10 triangular tiles missing per fish) and B) invoking the cursor in full screen mode can cause the program to crash. Oddly, it doesn't crash in backdrop mode if the cursor is activated.

RBEmerson · 05-09-2003, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by Jim Sachs
RBEmerson -

Do other 3D applications run? "Lots of dots and colors" doesn't mean 3D. The 3D drivers are totally different, and might be what are causing the crash.

Fair question. Can you suggest some good guinea pig programs or demos that give 3D a good wringing out?

Also, just out of curiousity, are you a diver?

feldon34 · 05-09-2003, 12:06 PM

I hate to sound this way, but if you can think of a way for the Aquarium to work seamlessly with the awful drivers most computers come with, let us know.

I think it would be a conservative estimate to say that 1,000 programming hours have been spent just working around bad drivers and bugs in DirectX which Microsoft refuses to fix.

I am sorry that you have had trouble running the Aquarium on your computer. I wish laptop manufacturers would stop "going cheap" with these Trident chipsets.

Tiny Turtle · 05-09-2003, 12:21 PM

Try this one. (1.6 MB)

/Tiny 3D

RBEmerson · 05-09-2003, 01:55 PM

Originally posted by Tiny Turtle
Try this one. (1.6 MB)

/Tiny 3D

Went there, did that, it works (albeit with a frame rate of about 12 fps). I got frame rates of around 25-30 with MA V2.0 when it behaved.

Jav400 · 05-09-2003, 03:34 PM

RB,

What happens when you run the DX Diag tests?

RBEmerson · 05-09-2003, 05:04 PM

Originally posted by Jav400
RB,

What happens when you run the DX Diag tests?

Life was doing just fine until I got to the DirectX3D 9 test - the box flipped around for a while and then... kee-rash! Disabling 3D acceleration produced a message that 9+ 3D isn't support by this system. Sigh... [frown]

Jim Sachs · 05-09-2003, 06:27 PM

So far all the 3D apps that you have listed (SereneScreen, Aquareal, and the 3D part of DX test) have crashed, so I think we have pretty much narrowed it down to the 3D drivers.

I wish I could give you some help, but this is just the nature of life in the world of DirectX. It's also the reason we insist that every prospective customer downloads the Aquarium and tests it on their machine before purchasing.

The good news is that it probably won't be long before Trident comes out with acceptable drivers. No card manufacturer can last long without decent 3D these days. I'll bet if you wrote to them they would say that new drivers will be available "any day".

RBEmerson · 05-11-2003, 08:57 PM

Originally posted by Jim Sachs
So far all the 3D apps that you have listed (SereneScreen, Aquareal, and the 3D part of DX test) have crashed, so I think we have pretty much narrowed it down to the 3D drivers.

So it would seem. Sigh...

I wish I could give you some help, but this is just the nature of life in the world of DirectX. It's also the reason we insist that every prospective customer downloads the Aquarium and tests it on their machine before purchasing.

FWIW, I came to product via an XP demo (don't want XP in my life! No! No!) and then seeing the retail item at CompUSA.

Looking at the "Recommended System Requirements" list, the N5470 meets all the specs(Pentium, 120MHz or faster; Windows 9x, 2000, ME, or XP; 16M of RAM or more; DirectX 6 or newer; Direct3D compatible video card w/ 4M of RAM or more; 2M of HDD space, DirectX compatible sound card). While it can be argued the apparent problem with the drivers raises a flag over the video card, if running the product is that uncertain, then the packaging needs some attention.

The good news is that it probably won't be long before Trident comes out with acceptable drivers. No card manufacturer can last long without decent 3D these days. I'll bet if you wrote to them they would say that new drivers will be available "any day".

Given things haven't changed in the past two years, I'm not holding my breath while waiting for Trident to do more to support this video system.

Socrates · 05-11-2003, 09:07 PM

It almost sounds like you may have a hardware problem with the 3d accelerator part of the video hardware.

As far as the product box needing attention, if a machine is crashing in every single D3D app, then to me it sound like the computer is not actually d3d compatible, and I would think the computer manufacturer is the one that needs to rethink the claim. In this case, I am more inclined to believe that "laziness" in driver updating on the part of the manufacturer or an actual problem in the hardware is culprit.

Are you sure that that particular chipset and driver is actually compatible with Dx9 by the way?

RBEmerson · 05-12-2003, 07:15 AM

I just went back to the Trident web site to verify the version of the driver for the video system on this laptop is up to date. Unless there's another Win2K driver hidden somewhere else, the rev numbers match all too closely. My suspicion is this video system is old enough (10/25/2001) that Trident isn't doing any maintenance on it. I have no idea when the issue with Direct3D 9 showed up but the bottom line is the driver crashes DiagDX now.

My point about listing the minimum requirements is that I went into this situation thinking everything was as it should be. MA has shown it's not. Life will go on.

RBEmerson · 05-12-2003, 02:17 PM

Borrowing from Grateful Dead lyrics: "what a long strange trip it's been".

I found a driver collection for Win2K in the HP web site which seemed to totally kill the display. Until I got clever and popped the "change output mode" (switchs from internal to external displays) and... the screen was no longer black! Getting really brave and bold, I tried a Trident web site driver (even though it says don't use this driver on a laptop) and... wonder of wonders, it seems to be playing well enough to support bubbles, 7 fish, and giving a frame rate of around 31 fps. There are still some mysteries in the driver but for now the matter seems resolved.

Once again Trident, Microsoft and HP did their best to make this process as hard as possible.

Makes me glad my main machine is a Linux box...

Speaking of which, when does MA port to Linux?

feldon34 · 05-12-2003, 02:41 PM

Originally posted by RBEmerson
Looking at the "Recommended System Requirements" list, the N5470 meets all the specs(Pentium, 120MHz or faster; Windows 9x, 2000, ME, or XP; 16M of RAM or more; DirectX 6 or newer; Direct3D compatible video card w/ 4M of RAM or more; 2M of HDD space, DirectX compatible sound card).

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Prolific asked my opinion on the requirements. I suggested not putting 4MB.

And it could be argued that the video card (in this case a chipset), provided by Trident is not fully Direct3D-compatible. Or at least they can't find any programmers to get the driver to a useful state.

It's funny, Toshiba didn't have any trouble acquiring or tweaking a Trident Cyberblade XP driver to the point where it would run Direct3D programs trouble-free.

The Toshiba-laptop TC XP driver on my Drivers page (last item on the page) has been a popular and successful download.

I'm thinking you're going to want to rip out DirectX 9.0a with one of the DirectX destroyer programs (Microsoft's official position on uninstalling DirectX is to format! idiots!!) and roll yourself back to the DirectX 8.1 that XP comes with. Then go with the Trident Cyberblade XP driver that works so well on the Toshibas.

If you do not want to go through this additional hassle and you have purchased the Aquarium, I would imagine some kind of refund might be possible.

RBEmerson · 05-12-2003, 05:50 PM

In fact I found a functional driver which kept MA running non-stop for about 2 hours (note MA crashed hard in about as many seconds on occasion) until responding to this note. I consider the problem resolved satisfactorily (MA is running on demand

).

On the matter of the requirements, "Recommended System Requirements" is, IMNSHO, grounds for having someone spend some serious time with a dictionary. It's either "Recommended System [Configuration]" or "System Requirements"; "recommendation" and "requirement" are antithetical.

And with that I'm going to go just sits and watch the pretty fishes.

feldon34 · 05-12-2003, 08:48 PM

I agree. Maybe it was written to flummox any lawyer who got their mitts on such a case.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could point us in the direction of the driver you used which gave you positive results!

RBEmerson · 05-12-2003, 09:28 PM

Er, being married to an attorney and having had a bit of Law1 wear off on me, the wording is more like a nice place to run a truck through, sideways.

On the HP web site, <a href="http://h20004.www2.hp.com/soar_rnotes/bsdmatrix/matrix43276en_US.html" target="_blank">look here</a> for the link to triw2k01.exe.

DISCLAIMER: This driver has at least one problem: it defaults to an external display instead of the laptop's internal display (use Fn-F5 to switch modes) and there may well be other problems and bugs. Failure to adhere to HP usage guidelines could cause loss of video or total system failure.

By way of comment, currently when my system boots up with this driver, the screen goes blank after Win2K launches. I have to re-direct video back to the internal display to light up the display. Clearly, this is a hack and "not ready for prime time".

feldon34 · 05-13-2003, 08:54 AM

So who's going to write Mr. Emerson a macro that will type "Fn-F5"?

Is it even possible to generate this keystroke from Windows?

05-09-2003, 09:05 AM	#1
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	HP Pavilion N5470 & Win2K Pro crashes on V1 & 2 I'm trying to get either version (V1.0 bought at CompUSA and V2.0 d/l from Serene Screen) to run on this laptop and not having much luck. The symptoms are pretty simple: the screen image freezes, the sound loops at the last sound fragment heard, and CTL-ALT-DEL has no effect. I have to hold the power button down to shut down the laptop. On re-booting, the corrupt bit is set on the hard driver (40G) and Win2K does a scandisk before starting Win2K fully. Sometimes I have to restore the active desktop screen background (a JPEG image). The crash happens within a few seconds even with one fish (french angel) and no bubbles. Exit on mouse motion is off. The video "card" is a Trident CyberBlade XP, I have the current drivers from HP, and DirectX 9.0a. The CPU is 1 GHz Athlon 4, there's 256M of RAM on top of a 40G HDD (currently ~25G free). I don't have AOL Instant Messanger, etc. running but I do have Norton, NoAds (pop-up blocker), CookiePal (cookie blocker), Ship's Bell (chimes on the hour and half hour with ding-ding, ding-ding, etc.) and GetTime (gets time of day from NTP server on my local net) running plus whatever stuff Microsoft adds for running Win2KPro (SP3 and critical patches). I did a search here for this laptop (HP Pavilion N5470) but didn't find anything. All other blankers work without a hitch including Syntrillium's Snoqualmie blanker (lots of dots and colors moving around). Help! Cheers, Rick Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-09-2003, 09:53 AM	#2
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	Can you close all those programs and then test the Aquarium again? Also, I love how the "latest" driver for that Trident Cyberblade XP video chipset is dated 26-Jul-01. You might need to download a driver like this one: http://www2.driverguide.com/cgi/down...84/trident.zip But please be aware that if this driver does not work, you may need to log into Safe mode to get back to the old driver. As to "Why do I need to change my computer to run the Aquarium?" Strangely, most computer manufacturers not to mention Microsoft include very watered-down and often buggy drivers as the "default" drivers. You don't notice problems because you are not doing anything demanding with the computer like Direct3D applications, games, etc. I am not sure where this practice started, but it is a real problem and one that causes countless support headaches for SereneScreen and game publishers. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-09-2003, 10:39 AM	#3
Jim Sachs Developer Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 9,774	RBEmerson - Do other 3D applications run? "Lots of dots and colors" doesn't mean 3D. The 3D drivers are totally different, and might be what are causing the crash. Jim Sachs Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium

05-09-2003, 10:54 AM	#4
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Originally posted by feldon27 Can you close all those programs and then test the Aquarium again?[/i] Went there, did that (two french angels, no bubbles, no exit on mouse) at 1024x786x16 and... crashed as always. Also, I love how the "latest" driver for that Trident Cyberblade XP video chipset is dated 26-Jul-01. Uh, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Nah... I believe it, either. You might need to download a driver like this one: http://www2.driverguide.com/cgi/down...84/trident.zip But please be aware that if this driver does not work, you may need to log into Safe mode to get back to the old driver. Just so. This driver did terrible things to my system when I tried it a month or so back. As to "Why do I need to change my computer to run the Aquarium?" Strangely, most computer manufacturers not to mention Microsoft include very watered-down and often buggy drivers as the "default" drivers. You don't notice problems because you are not doing anything demanding with the computer like Direct3D applications, games, etc. I am not sure where this practice started, but it is a real problem and one that causes countless support headaches for SereneScreen and game publishers. Er, I don't think I asked the question but, um, since you raise it, having to re-tune the system drastically (e.g., GetTime services three other Windows PC's with ToD so killing that affects four PC's - not an option) to support a screen saver is Not Good. I will say that this particular laptop does a host of fairly demanding things including real time astro imaging (amazing what a web cam can be talked into doing!) and real-time boat navigation (either raster scan or vector generated charts moved as the boat moves as well as handling GPS input and running an autopilot that steers the boat) without collapsing. The longest non-stop run to date is Cape May, NJ to Block Island, NY on a sail boat; that was 35 hours of non-stop nav program operation (i.e., chart updates, steering data collection and distribution) without a problem. One other data point FWIW. The Aqua Real app works well in full screen and backdrop modes with only two problems. A) There are some dropouts in all moving objects (maybe 5-10 triangular tiles missing per fish) and B) invoking the cursor in full screen mode can cause the program to crash. Oddly, it doesn't crash in backdrop mode if the cursor is activated. Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-09-2003, 11:01 AM	#5
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Originally posted by Jim Sachs RBEmerson - Do other 3D applications run? "Lots of dots and colors" doesn't mean 3D. The 3D drivers are totally different, and might be what are causing the crash. Fair question. Can you suggest some good guinea pig programs or demos that give 3D a good wringing out? Also, just out of curiousity, are you a diver? Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-09-2003, 12:06 PM	#6
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	I hate to sound this way, but if you can think of a way for the Aquarium to work seamlessly with the awful drivers most computers come with, let us know. I think it would be a conservative estimate to say that 1,000 programming hours have been spent just working around bad drivers and bugs in DirectX which Microsoft refuses to fix. I am sorry that you have had trouble running the Aquarium on your computer. I wish laptop manufacturers would stop "going cheap" with these Trident chipsets. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-09-2003, 12:21 PM	#7
Tiny Turtle is pleased Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 7,365	Try this one. (1.6 MB) /Tiny 3D Thanks to Morgan, Tiny Snapshots is up and running again with "Tiny Järvafält" as the latest addition – Go have a look and tell me what you think. "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." /Robert Oppenheimer on witnessing the first thermonuclear detonation in history.

05-09-2003, 01:55 PM	#8
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Originally posted by Tiny Turtle Try this one. (1.6 MB) /Tiny 3D Went there, did that, it works (albeit with a frame rate of about 12 fps). I got frame rates of around 25-30 with MA V2.0 when it behaved. Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-09-2003, 03:34 PM	#9
Jav400 Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Tennessee Posts: 9,725	RB, What happens when you run the DX Diag tests? Michael Administrator of Inside:SereneScreen Aquarium Forum, Chatroom, Fan Site & *Gallery* DVD Collection

05-09-2003, 05:04 PM	#10
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Originally posted by Jav400 RB, What happens when you run the DX Diag tests? Life was doing just fine until I got to the DirectX3D 9 test - the box flipped around for a while and then... kee-rash! Disabling 3D acceleration produced a message that 9+ 3D isn't support by this system. Sigh... [frown] Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-09-2003, 06:27 PM	#11
Jim Sachs Developer Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 9,774	So far all the 3D apps that you have listed (SereneScreen, Aquareal, and the 3D part of DX test) have crashed, so I think we have pretty much narrowed it down to the 3D drivers. I wish I could give you some help, but this is just the nature of life in the world of DirectX. It's also the reason we insist that every prospective customer downloads the Aquarium and tests it on their machine before purchasing. The good news is that it probably won't be long before Trident comes out with acceptable drivers. No card manufacturer can last long without decent 3D these days. I'll bet if you wrote to them they would say that new drivers will be available "any day". Jim Sachs Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium

05-11-2003, 08:57 PM	#12
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Originally posted by Jim Sachs So far all the 3D apps that you have listed (SereneScreen, Aquareal, and the 3D part of DX test) have crashed, so I think we have pretty much narrowed it down to the 3D drivers. So it would seem. Sigh... I wish I could give you some help, but this is just the nature of life in the world of DirectX. It's also the reason we insist that every prospective customer downloads the Aquarium and tests it on their machine before purchasing. FWIW, I came to product via an XP demo (don't want XP in my life! No! No!) and then seeing the retail item at CompUSA. Looking at the "Recommended System Requirements" list, the N5470 meets all the specs(Pentium, 120MHz or faster; Windows 9x, 2000, ME, or XP; 16M of RAM or more; DirectX 6 or newer; Direct3D compatible video card w/ 4M of RAM or more; 2M of HDD space, DirectX compatible sound card). While it can be argued the apparent problem with the drivers raises a flag over the video card, if running the product is that uncertain, then the packaging needs some attention. The good news is that it probably won't be long before Trident comes out with acceptable drivers. No card manufacturer can last long without decent 3D these days. I'll bet if you wrote to them they would say that new drivers will be available "any day". Given things haven't changed in the past two years, I'm not holding my breath while waiting for Trident to do more to support this video system. Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-11-2003, 09:07 PM	#13
Socrates Sage Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: West Hills, CA Posts: 1,529	It almost sounds like you may have a hardware problem with the 3d accelerator part of the video hardware. As far as the product box needing attention, if a machine is crashing in every single D3D app, then to me it sound like the computer is not actually d3d compatible, and I would think the computer manufacturer is the one that needs to rethink the claim. In this case, I am more inclined to believe that "laziness" in driver updating on the part of the manufacturer or an actual problem in the hardware is culprit. Are you sure that that particular chipset and driver is actually compatible with Dx9 by the way? Bat rays? We don't need no stinking bat rays!

05-12-2003, 07:15 AM	#14
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	I just went back to the Trident web site to verify the version of the driver for the video system on this laptop is up to date. Unless there's another Win2K driver hidden somewhere else, the rev numbers match all too closely. My suspicion is this video system is old enough (10/25/2001) that Trident isn't doing any maintenance on it. I have no idea when the issue with Direct3D 9 showed up but the bottom line is the driver crashes DiagDX now. My point about listing the minimum requirements is that I went into this situation thinking everything was as it should be. MA has shown it's not. Life will go on. Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-12-2003, 02:17 PM	#15
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Borrowing from Grateful Dead lyrics: "what a long strange trip it's been". I found a driver collection for Win2K in the HP web site which seemed to totally kill the display. Until I got clever and popped the "change output mode" (switchs from internal to external displays) and... the screen was no longer black! Getting really brave and bold, I tried a Trident web site driver (even though it says don't use this driver on a laptop) and... wonder of wonders, it seems to be playing well enough to support bubbles, 7 fish, and giving a frame rate of around 31 fps. There are still some mysteries in the driver but for now the matter seems resolved. Once again Trident, Microsoft and HP did their best to make this process as hard as possible. Makes me glad my main machine is a Linux box... Speaking of which, when does MA port to Linux? Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-12-2003, 02:41 PM	#16
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	Originally posted by RBEmerson Looking at the "Recommended System Requirements" list, the N5470 meets all the specs(Pentium, 120MHz or faster; Windows 9x, 2000, ME, or XP; 16M of RAM or more; DirectX 6 or newer; Direct3D compatible video card w/ 4M of RAM or more; 2M of HDD space, DirectX compatible sound card). A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Prolific asked my opinion on the requirements. I suggested not putting 4MB. And it could be argued that the video card (in this case a chipset), provided by Trident is not fully Direct3D-compatible. Or at least they can't find any programmers to get the driver to a useful state. It's funny, Toshiba didn't have any trouble acquiring or tweaking a Trident Cyberblade XP driver to the point where it would run Direct3D programs trouble-free. The Toshiba-laptop TC XP driver on my Drivers page (last item on the page) has been a popular and successful download. I'm thinking you're going to want to rip out DirectX 9.0a with one of the DirectX destroyer programs (Microsoft's official position on uninstalling DirectX is to format! idiots!!) and roll yourself back to the DirectX 8.1 that XP comes with. Then go with the Trident Cyberblade XP driver that works so well on the Toshibas. If you do not want to go through this additional hassle and you have purchased the Aquarium, I would imagine some kind of refund might be possible. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-12-2003, 05:50 PM	#17
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	In fact I found a functional driver which kept MA running non-stop for about 2 hours (note MA crashed hard in about as many seconds on occasion) until responding to this note. I consider the problem resolved satisfactorily (MA is running on demand ). On the matter of the requirements, "Recommended System Requirements" is, IMNSHO, grounds for having someone spend some serious time with a dictionary. It's either "Recommended System [Configuration]" or "System Requirements"; "recommendation" and "requirement" are antithetical. And with that I'm going to go just sits and watch the pretty fishes. Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-12-2003, 08:48 PM	#18
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	I agree. Maybe it was written to flummox any lawyer who got their mitts on such a case. It would be greatly appreciated if you could point us in the direction of the driver you used which gave you positive results! "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-12-2003, 09:28 PM	#19
RBEmerson Registered Join Date: May 2003 Location: Skippack, PA Posts: 47	Er, being married to an attorney and having had a bit of Law1 wear off on me, the wording is more like a nice place to run a truck through, sideways. On the HP web site, <a href="http://h20004.www2.hp.com/soar_rnotes/bsdmatrix/matrix43276en_US.html" target="_blank">look here</a> for the link to triw2k01.exe. DISCLAIMER: This driver has at least one problem: it defaults to an external display instead of the laptop's internal display (use Fn-F5 to switch modes) and there may well be other problems and bugs. Failure to adhere to HP usage guidelines could cause loss of video or total system failure. By way of comment, currently when my system boots up with this driver, the screen goes blank after Win2K launches. I have to re-direct video back to the internal display to light up the display. Clearly, this is a hack and "not ready for prime time". Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.

05-13-2003, 08:54 AM	#20
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	So who's going to write Mr. Emerson a macro that will type "Fn-F5"? Is it even possible to generate this keystroke from Windows? "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman